Hourglass

Mrs. Bethany, I thought with a shiver. She would get revenge for the damage to Evernight Academy if there were any way possible. “Why do you think that?”

“We keep finding dead birds near the building. Like something’s killing them. At first we were making jokes about bird flu, but today Milos checked out the corpses, and sure enough, they’d been drained of blood. We’ve got a vamp around here, and we’ll all be watching the roof and the nearby area to get a glimpse of our visitor. Then we’ll ask a few questions of our own.”

Lucas and I shared a glance. No vampires were watching the HQ; I had left the birds. Why hadn’t I thrown them away more carefully? I had tried, but there hadn’t been many options.

From this moment on, my blood supply was cut off—and that meant our time to plan our escape was running out.

Chapter Five (#ulink_dfc469e4-a1cd-5426-82a0-7c1453adbe6b)

THAT NIGHT, AS I TRIED TO GO TO SLEEP, I KEPT telling myself, You have five days. You were able to last that long without blood when you first left Evernight Academy. That means you can last that long again.

Besides, Black Cross has put me on patrols. I’ll be able to get out, nearly every day, and surely I’ll have chances to eat then. Everything will be okay.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

First of all, my hunger for blood had grown. I’d spent only a month in Black Cross, but my body was continuing to change. The vampire inside me was growing stronger as the human grew weaker.

After I had drunk Lucas’s blood for the first time, my mother had warned me: You’ve turned over the hourglass. What she meant was that my vampire nature had been awakened by the taste of living human blood. Where, before, I’d been a mostly normal teenage girl—albeit one who drank a glass of O positive with her dinner—I wasn’t so normal anymore.

My hearing had become so acute that I could hear people whispering several car cabins down from mine and Raquel’s. My skin had become so pale that a couple of people had remarked on it, though mostly jokingly, like Dana saying that this was what happened when white people tried to live underground. Occasionally the Black Cross patrols crossed the East River bridges to guard areas in Brooklyn or Queens; the mere thought of crossing running water made me nauseated. I felt grateful that the makeshift bathroom in Black Cross headquarters had no mirror, because I suspected my reflection was beginning to fade.

My parents had warned me what happened to vampires who didn’t drink blood. Their appearances continued to change, warping until they looked like the monsters of legend: white, bony creatures whose fingernails jutted out almost like claws. Their hair fell out. Constant hunger caused their fangs to show at all times. Worst of all was the madness; when vampires truly hit the point of blood starvation, their minds went. Instead of behaving more or less like human beings, they became like wild animals, immune to conscience or restraint. Even a good vampire could become a killer if deprived of blood for that long.

Yeah, this is how your parents get you to clean your plate when you’re a baby vampire. The old stories were definitely scary enough to get me to drink my whole glass of O positive back in the day. Now that childhood horror had returned as I wondered every day, Can that happen to me, even though I’m not a full vampire yet? How am I different? How am I the same? How am I supposed to go on, not knowing?

Even while out on the Black Cross patrols I didn’t have a chance to eat. Time and again, I was partnered with people other than Lucas; night after night, we went to locations that offered me no chance to hunt for food. I was never forced to see a vampire being murdered, which was a small mercy, but by this time I was hungry enough to become selfish. I only wanted to drink, and I couldn’t.

Within five days I was desperate. That was the night Lucas and I finally got to patrol together again.

“We have got to come back here once we get some free time again,” Dana said as our group began patrol. The June heat radiated up from the streets, even though it was twilight; sweat beaded the small of my back. “Because this looks like a good place to party.”

All around us were nightclubs and bars—some of which looked seedy to me, while the others looked sleek and expensive. There didn’t seem to be much middle ground. “I think I’d get carded.”

“Slap some makeup on you and Raquel, and y’all would be set,” Dana insisted. “Hey, are you all right?”

“Just tired. They had me do the climbing wall twice today.”

Dana thumped my shoulder. “They’re making you tough.”

Lucas glanced at our leader for the night—it was Milos, one of Eliza’s lieutenants, a rangy guy with white-blond hair and beard. He said to Milos, “I’d like to take Bianca along the east side of our zone. Okay?”

Please say yes, please say yes. Lucas can help me get something to eat, I know he can—

“Suit yourselves,” Milos said. His smile had a knowing quality—almost a smirk—but I didn’t care. Let him think we were sneaking off to make out. I only wished we had that kind of luxury.

Some of the others murmured and giggled, but nobody stopped us as I took Lucas’s hand and we walked together into the dark.

As soon as we were alone, Lucas said, “You look like hell.”

“Maybe I ought to be mad at you for saying that, but I know you’re right.” He was towing me along the sidewalk, beneath a few small trees that had been planted in open squares in the pavement. From the apartments around us, I could hear snatches of salsa music at different tempos, like competing heartbeats. “I have to get something to eat. It’s making me crazy.”

“There’s a hospital not far from the HQ. I was thinking I could break into the blood bank, almost like we did last year, remember?”

It was a good idea for the future, but I needed a faster solution. “Lucas, I can’t wait any longer. I mean it. I have to have blood tonight.”

He stopped, and for a few seconds we simply stared at each other on the sidewalk. Sweat marked the collar of his white T-shirt, and his bronze hair had darkened to the color of night. His thumb brushed my cheek. I was startled by how much warmer his flesh was than mine.

Haltingly, Lucas said, “I’m going to take care of you.”

“I know you will.” My trust in him was absolute. “But how? Is there a place around here we could hunt?”

“Come on.”

Faster, driven by purpose, Lucas towed me along the sidewalk. After a couple of blocks, the neighborhood quieted down a little—we were far from any of the main streets now, closer to the water.

We reached a storefront with windows newspapered over from the inside, and signs that read FOR RENT. Lucas stopped there. “I’m guessing this is bone empty,” he said, pulling a thin metal lock pick from his jeans pocket. “Which means there’s probably no alarm system activated either.”

“Why are we breaking in?”

“Privacy.”

Lucas jimmied the lock in about four seconds flat. I remembered my own feeble attempt at burglary, almost a year ago, and envied him his sure touch.

We ducked into the store, and Lucas immediately shut the door behind us. Streetlights shone through the newsprint, casting a muted golden light. The hardwood floors beneath us were old and unpolished, and an abandoned bar lined one wall. A mottled mirror hung behind the bar, and I stood in front of it to see myself. I was only a shadow—a pale silvery outline of myself. Like a ghost.

This is how Patrice used to look when she wouldn’t drink blood for a while, I thought. I never believed this could happen to me. Why didn’t I understand what it meant to be a vampire?

“Okay,” Lucas said. He seemed nervous. “We’re alone.”

I smiled at him, though I felt sad. “I wish we could do something with this chance besides feed me,” I said. His kisses were so far away; they were a memory almost too beautiful to belong to my real life any longer. “What are we going to do? Do you have a plan?”

“Yeah. You’re going to drink from me.”

At first I couldn’t believe I’d heard him correctly. Of course, I had drunk Lucas’s blood before—twice, so far. Both times, the experience had been intense, to say the least. Drinking blood was sensual, even sexual. I’d only ever drunk the blood of one other guy, Balthazar, and that was the closest I’d ever come to making love. But what happened between Balthazar and me was purely physical. With Lucas, the emotion made it more powerful.

So I should’ve leaped at the chance, right? Wrong.

Before, when this had happened between us, I’d been well fed. My loss of control with Lucas had been because of my passion for him, not because of hunger. The same love that drove me to bite him had also compelled me to stop before I hurt him. Now that I was governed by this wild craving, the one that clawed at me from within—I wasn’t so sure I could stop.

“It’s dangerous,” I said. “We should try another way.”

“There isn’t any other way.” Lucas slowly lifted up the edge of his T-shirt and peeled it off. I knew he did that because he didn’t want to get blood on his clothes, but the nearness of his half-undressed body hit me like a blow. The golden light behind us outlined his firm, muscled form. “I trust you.”

“Lucas—”

“Come on.” He stepped closer to me. “This is the only way I have to take care of you. Let me take care of you.”

I shook my head. “You don’t understand. It’s different now. I’m so much hungrier.”